


Four Banquets (And What Comes After)

by damnslippyplanet



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Future Fic, Grand Prix Final, Grand Prix Final Banquet, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-07
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-10-29 07:39:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10849476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damnslippyplanet/pseuds/damnslippyplanet
Summary: Yuri’s hair is softer than Otabek thought it would be.He doesn’t remember when, exactly, he started having opinions about what he thought Yuri’s hair would feel like.It’s possible that even with Yuri stealing half of every drink, Otabek should have stopped drinking a while ago or eaten something other than figs for dinner.  Many things seem possible, at the moment.(Or: Four years' worth of GPF exhibitions, banquets, and Otabek trying to keep Yuri from stabbing anyone with a shrimp fork.)





	1. Chapter 1

**2016: Grand Prix Final Exhibition Skate**

Otabek skates early, with the sense of relief he always has in the final exhibition no matter how he’s placed.  Freed of caring about the numbers, he can just _skate._ It’s _almost_ nothing like skating the pond in Almaty where he’d first learned to push off, one wobbly shove after another until he caught the rhythm of it.  Almost but not entirely unlike that: Sometimes, when he closes his eyes and ignores the audience, he catches a glimpse of the memory.

Afterwards he spends the rest of the time until the final skate off in a quiet corner.  It’s his routine. Everyone knows by now that he prefers to be left alone.

Not that it stops Yuri from clomping over to him after a few minutes have passed.  Between the towering over Otabek (down on the floor, stretching) and the music spilling out of his headphones (loud, bass-heavy, more snarl than song), he almost manages to look intimidating.

(Almost.  Maybe in a few more years he’ll be as scary as he thinks he is now.)

Yuri’s sneaker _thuds_ nearly gently into the wall next to Otabek’s shoulder as he snaps: “You need a new routine. You’re better than that one.”

Otabek finishes leaning into the stretch before he answers, feeling for just how far his muscles are willing to go today after the last few days’ abuses.  Eventually he looks up and shrugs.  “I’m not going to kill myself for the gala.  That one works, and it’s fun for me.  I’m saving my energy for running away from the banquet.”

 _Thud._     _Thud_.  

“Yakov’s making me go.”

“You won the medal, you have to do the rounds.”  Otabek straightens up, slow, twingeing,every muscle a unique ache.  “I’m going out.  Loser’s privilege.”

 _Thud_.

Yuri walks away without another word.

Otabek comes back to the monitors to watch him skate.  Yuri’s music is too big for him, too loud for his willow-limbs and even his outsize personality. By all rights it should dwarf him.  Somehow it doesn’t; he throws himself into its teeth and lets it shred him, and in the process he makes himself big enough, transcendent. It’s a performance that might have won him another gold, and he throws it away on a gala.

Yuri is either going to be more than Victor Nikiforov ever was, or he’s going to burn himself out young trying.

Otabek’s not a betting man, and it’s for the best - he’s not sure which side of that bet he’d take.

*

**2016: Grand Prix Final Banquet**

Yuri’s texts from the banquet are wordless, just a stream of images:

_Yakov caught mid-yell_

_A waiter with purple hair_

_Victor and Yuuri exploring the possibilities of just how close two people can sit on a single chair_

_Phichit building some sort of massive structure out of empty glasses and bottles_

_Phichit’s glass tower toppling, caught in mid-tumble_

_Christophe taking his shirt off to bandage what looks like a very small cut on Phichit’s hand, which does not appear to need anything so involved as a full-shirt bandage._

_Yuri in a selfie, glaring into the camera, visibly radiating a sense of outrage that this is his life_

Otabek’s gone for a ride so he doesn’t get them as they come in; he flips through them all in a rush, sitting on a bench in a park that’s gone quiet since nightfall, and thanks whatever forces rule the universe that he’s not at the banquet.

He sends back a single image: clear sky, bright stars, absolutely no humans anywhere in sight.

It takes until the next morning to get a response, in actual words this time:

_I’m throwing it next year. That sucked._

_*_

**2017: Grand Prix Final Exhibition Skate**

Yuri doesn’t throw next year’s GPF.  

He skates a nearly-perfect program and takes a silver to be proud of.  It’s just that Yuuri’s program, bolstered by Victor’s choreography, is a scant handful of points better.

Victor beams up at the two of them from the lowest spot on the podium as if he couldn’t be prouder if he were the one in the gold spot instead.  He probably couldn’t be.  Otabek just goes ahead and taps out _Gross_ in a message to Yuri, to save him the trouble of sending it himself later.   _In a fair world, they’d each get a ten point deduction for being in love and you’d have gold._

Otabek would have liked to be up there, but he’s having a good season even if he didn’t have a good night, and he’s got Yuri to cheer for.  It’s not a bad way to wind up the finals at all.

*

He has a new exhibition routine this year.  It’s still fun, and still not competition-level, but he’s worked hard on it if only to shut Yuri up.

(Yuri never shuts up.)

It hardly matters that Otabek doesn’t actually place high enough to perform in the gala this time around, or that Yuri looks a little wobbly during his routine, as if he left something vital on the ice in his long program and hasn’t gotten it back yet.  No one’s looking at either of them anyway.

This year Victor and Yuuri skate long, curving arcs around each other in the exhibition, a courtship as much as a dance, in and out of each other’s orbits.  They’re not all over each other like the year before, but it’s almost worse because the anticipation builds up in between the moments when their separate choreographies intersect.

Predictably, Yuuri has to more or less tow Victor bodily off the ice to avoid being completely mauled by him in the middle of the rink.  

Yuri slides even further down in the seat next to Otabek and mutters a string of Russian profanity that would make Christophe Giacometti blush.  Christophe doesn’t hear it - he’s wolf-whistling loudly enough to give everyone in a two-mile radius a migraine.

Victor drapes himself over Yuuri once they’re off the ice. Yuuri looks happy. Otabek would rather die than say as much out loud, but it looks like it might not be the worst thing in the world.

*

**2017: Grand Prix Final Banquet**

Yuri didn’t precisely _ask_ Otabek to make an appearance at the banquet this year, but then he hardly ever asks for anything.  It’s possible that the question mark key on his phone is broken, or that Yuri doesn’t know what a question mark is for.

“If you don’t come and I stab someone and you’re not there to cover for me, you’re going to have to live with that,” was the closest he’d gotten.  

It was almost a request, and anyway Otabek already has the suit packed just in case.  He turns up half an hour late, just in time to bump into Leo and Phichit sneaking out, halfway down the hall with suspiciously champagne-bottle-shaped lumps under their jackets.

“We’re going up to the roof,” Leo informs him, “and you have to bring your own bottle if you want to join us.  Price of admission.”

Phichit quickly amends the rules: “Or snacks.  We accept food offerings.”

“ _No coaches allowed_ ,” Leo tosses over his shoulder as they continue on their way with their stolen goods.  Otabek watches  them for a bemused moment and then goes to stop Yuri from doing any permanent damage to anyone.

He finds Yuri skulking around the edges of the banquet hall, skewering everyone who crosses his path with a glare that promises dark and bloody things.

“ _Otabek,_ ” he hisses. He stretches out an arm to tug Otabek half in front of him. It’s unclear whether he’s trying to block his view of everything else, or everything else’s view of him.  “They’re retiring and Victor _cried_ when he told me.  He cried _on_ me. Get me out of here _now_.”

Otabek glances over at Victor and Yuuri, who appear to be hand-feeding each other something drippy that’s really not meant for hand-feeding.  Victor doesn’t look like he’s been crying.  But then he wouldn’t allow himself to, not at this dinner. Otabek can respect that.

“Do you know the way to the roof?” he asks.

Yuri’s headshake is barely visible, immediately crowded out by the stubborn set of his jaw.  “I’ll find it,” he says, as if he’ll personally torture someone to get his hands on the hotel’s blueprints.

Otabek thinks again: _soldier_.  He thinks: _He’s wasted on this._  And then he remembers the line of Yuri’s spine in motion and thinks: _He’d have been wasted on anything else._

“We’ll divide and conquer, then,” he says, brushing his other thoughts aside.  “Go figure out the best way to get up there. _Don’t yell at anyone_.”  Yuri’s eyes narrow at the injunction but he doesn’t argue for once, a minor miracle.  “I have to get a few things. I’ll meet you by the elevators in ten minutes.”

“ _Davai_ ,” Yuri responds, with an actual smile.  And then he’s off, a determined set to his shoulders as he heads off to be scarily intense at one of the waiters.

Otabek focuses on his own task: admission price to the rooftop party, which will hopefully involve neither crying nor coaches.  His jacket removed and draped over his arm hides a bottle well, but there’s no convenient way to sneak food out short of stuffing canapés in his pockets.  He’s entirely certain that more than one of these banquets has ended with someone smuggling out pockets full of deviled eggs, but he’s only got the one suit and he’s not going to sacrifice it for this.

By the time he finds Yuri, Yuri’s found the special elevator that goes up to the roof.  

“I didn’t yell,” he declares before Otabek can ask.

Otabek opts to believe him.  He didn’t see any crying waiters, so there’s a chance it’s true.  He pushes the door to the outdoor pool area open and holds it for Yuri, before Yuri can kick it down.  The night air sweeps in and ruffles them both, brisk and biting.

“You brought Yurio!”  Phichit’s voice, delighted.

“ _And_ more champagne.  You can stay.”  Leo appears to have appointed himself king of this particular rooftop gathering, if the vaguely benevolent gesture of approval he makes at them is any guide.  

Yuri bristles, of course, at the supposition that his right to be there is anyone’s to bestow or withhold.  Otabek grips his arm, not entirely gently, and steers him over to where Leo and Phichit are sprawled comfortably across a pile of cushions they’ve taken off the deck chairs and made into something resembling a pillow fort.  Emil is either asleep or passed out, sprawled half-on and half-off one of the denuded chairs.  Leo and Phichit don’t seem concerned about him, so Otabek decides not to be.

Otabek takes one of the other chairs in a controlled drop, feeling several muscles scream at him on the way down.  Yuri simply tumbles to the pillow-pile near Otabek’s feet in an instant, a marionette with his strings cut, ending in a comfortable sprawl.  Otabek seems to recall that there was a time when he could do the same, and tries not to envy Yuri for still being able.

Phichit raises a plastic cup, brimming with bubbly golden liquid, in their direction.  He takes a heavy slug of it before asking, “Has Ciao-Ciao figured out I left yet?”

Otabek scans his memory, but he was only looking for Yuri.  He shrugs and reaches for a cup to start catching up.

Yuri starts to peel his jacket off while he thinks.  “I don’t think so,” he finally answers.  “When we left the coaches were all at their own table having incredibly boring conversations.  Except _Victor_ , of course.”

Phichit rolls his eyes but somehow manages to grin at the same time.  “Of course.  Doesn’t matter, he’s still a coach, he can’t come up here tonight.”

“Traitor,” Yuri mutters, and reaches behind his head to snatch the champagne-filled cup from Otabek’s fingers without even looking.  

“ _Traitor!”_ Phichit’s agreement is entirely cheerful, and he leans over to clink his plastic cup against Yuri’s, formerly Otabek’s, cup.

Otabek sighs and reaches for another cup.  Yuri might bite him if he tries to take that one back.

When he turns his attention back to the conversation, Phichit and Yuri are off and running. They’ve apparently found common ground in a discussion of the joint treason of Victor and Yuuri, abandoning the two of them.  Phichit seems to be mostly (not entirely) joking, while Yuri is deadly serious.  Otabek’s not sure either of them understands that about the other.

He judges that Yuri is enjoying the venting session and unlikely to unleash his claws anytime soon, and lets himself sink comfortably into his chair.  He watches the stars, offering little more than a murmur of agreement here and there.  He keeps filling cups and Yuri keeps taking them away and passing the empties back.

At some point Emil wakes up, fist-bumps Leo, and wanders down to the banquet again.  Yuri texts Mila and she shows up with a purse full of stolen food and her own opinions on Victor’s treachery in letting Japan steal him away.  Otabek, suddenly starving, eats ten bacon-wrapped figs out of her purse in quick succession.  (There were twelve, but Yuri stole two.)

Guang Hong arrives and steals Phichit for an impromptu dance party on the other side of the pool.  The music’s awful, but Guang Hong brought vodka and a fresh bucket of ice.  He’s allowed to stay.

Yuri shifts to lean his head back against Otabek’s thigh, the better to see and steal Otabek’s snacks.

“Do you have anything of yours we can play?” he asks, sleepy-heavy against Otabek’s leg.  “This is garbage.”

Otabek always has some of his own mixes on his phone, but he doesn’t want to play them here.  Something about mixing his two worlds, ice and music, which he generally doesn’t do for anyone but Yuri.  Or maybe he just doesn’t want to move.

“Nothing that’s ready,” he temporizes.  Yuri will understand that; the need to hone your performance in private until it’s ready to show others. Until it’s sharp enough to wound; to win.

“Sucks,” Yuri mutters, and lets his eyes fall shut.  

Otabek doesn’t know when he started stroking Yuri’s hair, playing idly with the ends and periodically running his hand through the length.  Was it just now, or has he been doing it all night?  He’s thought about it before: when he takes Yuri for rides and Yuri takes off his helmet, pink and wind-swept, and Otabek shoves his hands deep into his pockets.

Yuri’s hair is softer than Otabek thought it would be.

He doesn’t remember when, exactly, he started having opinions about what he thought Yuri’s hair would feel like.

It’s possible that even with Yuri stealing half of every drink, Otabek should have stopped drinking a while ago or eaten something other than figs for dinner.  Many things seem possible, at the moment.

When Phichit drags Yuri away to dance ( _“Yurio! I have the_ _best_ _idea!  Victor abandoned you, Yuuri never texts after midnight any more, we both need new bros!_ **_Let’s be bros together!_ ** ”), Otabek leans back and watches the stars spin overhead.  His blood feels fizzy; his breath feels short, stolen by the chill in the air.

He drifts, and dozes, and wakes eventually to Yuri leaning over him threatening to pour ice cubes down his shirt if he doesn’t wake up.  

So that’s the world just as it should be, then.


	2. Chapter 2

**2018: Grand Prix Final Exhibition Skate**

Otabek has never had time or patience for coming up with a theme for each season’s skating. He picks a vague abstract noun each year if asked, and tries not to roll his eyes visibly when the commentators read too much into how each program illustrates his supposed theme. As long as his programs stand alone, he doesn’t much care whether other people want to try to cram them into some overall story of “flight” or “courage” or “transformation.”

Yuri, texting him from an airplane where he was trapped between Victor and Mila, dared him to make his theme this year “Love Makes You An Asshole: The Story of How Victor Nikiforov Won’t Stop Whining About How Much He Misses Yuuri During The Ten Seconds A Month They’re Not Together”.

 _Yearning_ , Otabek had said at the press conference. _My skating this season will be about distances between the things we want and the things we can have, and the way we fling ourselves, despite our better judgment, across the gap._

Or something like that. He might not have said it just that way. He’d been too busy making sure to meet the camera’s emotionless eye, doing his best to meet Yuri’s gaze from across an ocean, to convey _I see your dare, I have no sympathy for your Victor Nikiforov problem, and you owe me a box of Katsuki’s weird Japanese snack food now._

So now, as he falls to one knee at the close of his gala skate, panting and exhausted, he supposes that somewhere a commentator is saying something about that final spiral as an expression of unrequited longing. He doesn’t feel it, though. He just feels blank: wrecked and wiped clean. It’s been a long season in a long year, and he thinks he might stagger back to his hotel room, stare at his medal for a while longer, and then pass out for at least a week.

He thinks that he catches a glimpse of Yuri in the audience - hard to believe anyone else is waving a hot-pink-and-black leopard-print crutch in the air - but it’s hard to be sure, with all the lights.

*

When he fetches his phone from its locker and swipes his messages open, the first one’s from Yuri: _That didn’t suck_. There’s a smiling cat, and some fireworks, and a tiny silver medal, which Otabek is pretty sure isn’t even an emoji his phone offers.

His sister’s message is all exclamation points; she’s been going strong with those for a solid 24 hours and doesn’t seem likely to be stopping anytime soon.

Phichit’s is the last: _Pre-party at Yuri’s before the banquet. Be there and I’ll consider forgiving you, asshole_. Otabek suspects Phichit is going to be needling him about the four-tenths of a point between their scores for months. But Yuri’s going to be needling him just as hard about how he couldn’t manage gold even with Yuri sidelined, so he probably just needs to accept that constant text-based harassment is a fact of his life now. As if it hasn’t been for the past year, since Phichit and Yuri joined forces into some new and horrible thing that seems hell-bent on steamrolling everyone in its path.

 _what time_ , he asks Phichit, and _give everyone my love and tell them I’ll see them soon_ to Feruza, and then he gets stuck on Yuri. Yuri’s prickly lately, and not in the usual way that Otabek’s always been able to navigate effortlessly. This is different: the frustration of a convalescence, the jagged edge of pain, and the isolation of watching everyone else do what Yuri can’t, have honed Yuri’s claws to the point where even Otabek isn’t immune. A wrong word can draw a rebuke that stings for days.

 _Thank you_ , he finally says, and then types and deletes a few things. _It wasn’t as much fun without you_ or _what can I bring tonight to cheer you up_ or _I feel guilty_. He finally settles for _I missed you out there_ , and then shoves the phone in his pocket, and heads for his room and as much of a nap as he can squeeze in. He keeps his head down and doesn’t talk to anyone, not in the mood.

*

**2018: Grand Prix Final Banquet**

The sound of yelling and tinny video game music is loud enough to carry through the hotel door. Otabek waits for a break in the noise before he knocks.

He’s not prepared for Victor opening the door, or engulfing him in a hug. Victor hugs a lot. Otabek should be used to it by now but somehow never is.

“You’re smothering him,” Yuuri says from somewhere beyond the hug-monster that is Victor. When Yuuri plucks at Victor’s arm, he turns Otabek free. Otabek shoots Yuuri a grateful smile and nod.

Vctor drapes himself over Yuuri instead, murmuring something about _just trying to be a good host_ in Yuuri’s ear as Yuuri walks him back over toward the armchair. Freed from Victor’s clutches, Otabek surveys the rest of the room. Yuri’s on the bed with his leg propped up under an ice pack, waving a game controller vehemently at Leo and Phichit, who are occupying the desk chair and the floor respectively. Some sort of heated argument about cheating appears to be going on.

Otabek’s not sure you even can cheat in a video game, or for that matter why there’s a system hooked up in Yuri’s hotel room. But he knows better than to wade into the middle of whatever is going on there, so he gives a wide berth to that entire situation and investigates the room’s other major event: an offensively large room service delivery.

“Did you just order one of everything?” he asks no one in particular.

“Just about,” Mila pipes up from a corner where Otabek hadn’t even seen her, slung over the room’s last chair, snapping photos of the video game war. “Phichit vetoed a couple of things for being too healthy for a party. And Yakov vetoed booze because he’s the enemy of fun and because he knows we’d skip the banquet if we had our own champagne source up here.”

“Salads are not party food,” Phichit pipes up from the floor, waving cheerfully at Otabek. “Hey, Otabek. Tell Yuri that Luigi looks like Seung-gil with a mustache.”

Otabek wonders if his expression looks as uncomprehending as he feels. He considers, for a moment, the barrage of mockery he is about to invite. And then he goes ahead and asks: “...which one is Luigi?”

Leo’s head whips around like an outraged owl as he asks, “Are you serious?”

Otabek’s almost sure Luigi is one of the brothers, not the guy with the mushroom hat. _Almost_. He ducks the question in favor of loading up a plate with a little bit of several different appetizers, and Leo and Phichit go back to arguing about their racing game.

“Beka,” Yuri calls, imperious and just a little strained around the edges like he’s sounded for weeks. “Bring me some more of the cheese stuff and a Coke.”

Otabek stacks a few fried things on top of each other to make enough room for extra snacks for Yuri, and then perches uncertainly on the edge of the bed. It’s the only remaining space, especially if they’re going to share the plate, but…

“It’s fine,” Yuri says, impatient. “Come on. It’s better than it was last time.”

A month ago, when Otabek had visited Yuri right after his fall, any jostling of the bed made him wince and go even paler, even through the good drugs. He does seem better now, after weeks of PT and recovery. He must be, or Yakov wouldn’t have let him travel. Not even for the Grand Prix Final; not even to see Otabek’s silver. Otabek tries not to shake the bed too much anyway, as he finds a comfortable way to sit without impeding Yuri’s view of the mushroom guy throwing things at everyone else on the race track.

They sit in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the technicolor racetrack carnage unfold, stuffing their faces with fried cheeses and peppers and chicken skewers. Eventually the plate is empty, Yuri’s ice pack set aside.  Yuri leans up against Otabek’s arm so gingerly, Otabek can’t help but think of that first motorcycle ride.

“Come back up after the banquet,” Yuri says, still no question mark. The sharp point of his chin digs into Otabek’s shoulder.  He's tall enough for that now, as he hadn't been that first day.  “I’ll show you which one Luigi is.”

Phichit cackles something about _that’s what she said_ at the same time Victor protests, affronted, “Otabek’s not going to _leave you_ all _alone_!”

*

The picture Mila will post to her Instagram later will gain a devoted cult following among Yurio’s Angels, who have more or less adopted Otabek wholesale by now. Yuri's sushi pajamas will feature in a great deal of fan art. Otabek’s expression, wide-eyed and startled, will be cropped and emblazoned with half a dozen different memes.

(“You’re the new Dramatic Chipmunk!”, Phichit will crow. Otabek will quietly Google that later. _Why does he even know memes from 2007_ , he’ll ask Yuri afterwards, only to get the outraged response _why don’t you?_)

Otabek supposes he can see why it’s a funny image, divorced from its context.

All he sees, looking at it himself, is pure alarm. He’s not so naive to think it’s a _secret_ , the way he knows by now that he could feel, if he ever really let himself, if it weren’t a terrible idea. But he didn’t think it was so obvious as all that, that even Victor would know.

No matter how closely the meme-maker crops Otabek’s face, there’s always at least a little sliver of blond hair in the lower right hand corner. Yuri’s head resting against him, the night he missed his own winner’s banquet in favor of a crash course in Mario Kart and a dinner of appetizers and pie.

Otabek rarely understands the meme, but he stops to look at the picture every time he sees it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, my friends, life has just been Too Many lately for writing to be happening, but fingers crossed this one might actually get finished soon. Meanwhile I thought I'd break up the rest into two chapters so that I can give you the finished bit now as a thank-you for your patience.
> 
> Also, all hail lazulisong, whose "[in post-soviet russia, mario kart owns u](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10427394)" was the first thing to pop into my head when I asked myself what video game they might be playing.

**Author's Note:**

> (Forgive the hilariously wrong description of Yuri's 2016 exhibition skate, please. That part of the fic was written before the glorious trashfire of Welcome to the Madness graced us all with its presence.)
> 
> (come praise/pet/scold the author [on Tumblr](https://damnslippyplanet.tumblr.com), if you like)


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